Of Fire And Blood
by Smudge93
Summary: For the UnGen Summer Fire Challenge 2009. A demon, a child and a psychic. And one night that changed the lives of the Winchester family forever. "What do you remember of that night?" "I remember the fire... the heat."
1. Chapter 1

This was done for the Ungen Summer Challenge 2009.

Three POVs from the night of that fire. The night that Mary died.

YED's, Dean's and Missouri's experience and feelings in relation to that night.

Enjoy, Mary x

YED, Kansas, 1983

I enter the house via the tradition method, in through the front door, smiling as I step over the welcome mat. It's so polite when people do that don't you think, welcome strangers into their homes, especially with what I have come to collect. Or is it deposit?

The only sound in the house is the television that John has fallen asleep in front of. There is some old war movie playing, paying tribute to the glorious death of the soldiers that had fallen in whatever battle is was that the humans were fighting with each other this time. A smile crosses my face as I think how these wars will all pale into insignificance to the one that I am about to set the course for, upstairs in this very house.

The landing at the top of the stairs leads to a little runway of closed doors but even still I know which one it is that my prize lies behind. It is a door though on the other side of the hallway that takes my attention for just a moment. I walk over and slowly push it open.

The small blonde haired boy is so beautiful in his easy sleep that it is a huge temptation for me just to kill him there, leave him bloody for his father to find. I lean forward and card my fingers through his soft hair, making him whimper quietly and turn over, away from me.

The voice ghosts through me.

_You can cover whatever the hell you want, but I'm still gonna kill you. _

"Future boy." I touch the sleeping child's throat, maybe I should just do it, tighten my grip and squeeze the life right out of him. "Where are your angels now?"

The image is clear in my head then, this child as a man, defiance shining in his green eyes. _Maybe not today, but you look into my eyes you son of a bitch, cause I'm the one that kills you. _I want to wake him, to see those eyes, to check if it really is him.

I lean low to whisper, a little chuckle escaping. "I'm not the one that you'll have to kill to stop this."

I give into the urge to tighten my fingers and he coughs but doesn't wake. It's then I hear the noise. The mother. Dear, sweet, beautiful Mary is awake and I no longer have time to play with this son when the other is patiently awaiting my arrival. "Later."

I glide across to the nursery, the lovingly constructed room in which this child was to be nurtured through its first few years of life. I slit my wrist and provide him with some nurture of my very own.

"John? Is he hungry?" Her voice is as sweet as the rest of her and I know that this is one that I am going to enjoy, that this child is special. A son of a hunter and not just any hunter….Mary Campbell. I make a little 'ssh' sound. She goes, thinking that her child is safe, being comforted by her husband.

_Sammy._ I like the sound of his name in my head. A strong name. An old name that is suited to the ancient evil that even now is seeping into the child before me.

The noise makes me turn. She is standing there in the doorway again, more beautiful than I remember, time has been kind to her, at least up until now.

"It's you."

Recognition shines in her eyes and she steps towards me. It is with a little pang of remorse that I flick my head and pin her against the wall. Her children are strong, she could perhaps have given me others but now she knows what I want…..now I have to finish her role in this game.

She makes no sound as I drag her up the wall and onto the ceiling, but she will soon, she has too. John has to come, only he can save his child now. Save him at least that is until I am ready for him, until he is old enough to take the challenge with the others.

I pull my arm across the air and tilt my head, letting the first few drops of her blood land softly onto my lips, her taste proving that her beauty is more than just skin deep. I wish that I could stay a while and feast at her banquet but she screams then as I knew she would have to and I hear him.

Feet on the stairs, coming to save that which can no longer be saved. His family is gone. His life, like hers, is over….._he_ just doesn't know it yet.

Slipping out the room as John comes in, he does not see me, eyes only for the son in front of him, thoughts only of his wife in his head, sleep still fogging the process of his mind.

The other child is awake, standing in the hallway and I get a brief glimpse of those eyes that I so wanted to see. A little smile of satisfaction crosses my lips, knowing that even death, should it come to call from him, cannot stop me now.

John is coming so I slip quietly back to the master bedroom, falling from the window, mindless of the damage to the skin that I will soon shed. I watch as the room explodes, wait until I see the child carried safely from the bowels of the house in the arms of his brother.

My work is done, the children are now all bound to me, all I can do is wait for my moment to come. For my champion to rise up above the others. I can't help but hope that this child will be the one. Good stock always makes a difference I have found.

I lick my lips for one last taste of her.

The small family stands in the shadows, the baby huddled in safety between the father and the brother, both watching as the world they know burns down around them. A small portent perhaps of the future that the child they so carefully protect will bring to pass.

With that happy thought….I take my leave.

**Chapter End Notes:**

One down, two to go...onto Dean.......


	2. Chapter 2

_Dean Winchester, Kansas, 2005 _

"What do you remember of that night?" It had been such a simple straight forward question and yet I hadn't been sure how to answer it.

"Not much." The lie slipped from my lips before I had time to think about it.

I had been four that night but I remembered everything. It was scorched on my brain by the heat of the flames of the fire.

It would be there forever.

Standing now in the restroom of the garage I splash cold water on my face to try and hide the tears trails that are there, and needing a moment before I face Sam, I go into the stall and rest my head on the cool metal of the wall.

_"What do you remember of that night?" _

_"I remember the fire... the heat." _

The memories come rushing back even as I try to lock them back up in the little box that I keep them in inside my head.

_Kansas 1983_

I had been sleeping, my dream escapes me now but I know that it was a good dream, a peaceful, happy sleep that I had been wrenched from.

Probably my last, peaceful, happy sleep.

Something had touched me, had pulled me up from the depth of my slumber but it was the scream that had woken me. I had never heard anyone scream like that before. And this wasn't just anyone that was making that awful sound.

This was my mother.

I was sure of it.

She needed help and I was going.

I threw the bedcovers back and dropped silently, barefooted to the floor.

I headed for the door.

My father rushes past me, almost knocking me over in his haste and the clench in my heart eases.

Dad is here.

Dad will know what to do.

So I stand in the hall and wait knowing that he will call if he needs me, mesmorised by the flames that seem to lick around me but in reality are only the reflections of those from the nursery.

That's when it hits me and I start to move forward.

My whole family is in that room.

And that room is burning.

I am alone out here.

I want to be with them.

I pray to God not to let me be left alone.

I promise that I will be a good boy if he doesn't take my family from me and leave me behind.

What I see slip from the room though has nothing to do with God I fear, it's eyes briefly flickering yellow in the firelight and then it is gone.

My father appears in the door then with a bundle in his arms that I know is my baby brother. "Daddy." It is the only word that I can get out before he thrusts Sam at me and I hug him tightly to my chest.

For the first time my father has let me hold the baby on my own. The enormity of his trust in me weights me.

He tells me to run, to not look back so I don't. I feel the heat on my back and it adds speed to my flight although I am careful of my step, mindful of the precious burden that I carry.

I breathe in the fresh air that my lungs are now screaming for as I reach the front door, carry my brother to safety and then stand helplessly on the lawn, the dew soaking my feet as I pray for my parents to come out too. I comfort my strangely silent brother and, taking my cue from him, I try not to cry.

Then my father is there, lifting us both and carrying us away from the house as the heat and the flames explode from the windows. We stay there on the lawn for what seems like hours, watching as our world burns and my mother with it. People are round us now, pulling Dad away, trying to take my brother from me.

I don't let them.

Dad entrusted Sam to me, he's my responsibility. They can't have him. I won't let them take him from me. Then my father is there again and he gently asks to see if Sam is ok. He tells me it is alright, that everything is going to be fine.

For the first time in my short life I doubt him.

I know that nothing will be alright again.

My mother is gone.

How can he make that right?

**Chapter End Notes:**

And finally......Missouri


	3. Chapter 3

_Missouri Moseley, Kansas, November 1983_

John had asked her to come here.

To check the house and see if she could find what had visited his family that night to rain death and destruction down on their lives.

Missouri had agreed, anything to help the distraught man in front of her with some closure on his wife's death.

Standing here now she knew she shouldn't have come.

What she was going to tell him would set him on a course that would change his life forever.

Not that that hadn't already happened.

The fuse was lit, she was just going to fan the flames.

She stepped forward and ripped the 'danger keep out' tape from the doorframe, trying to ignore the irony in that and stopped in the nursery doorway for a moment, steeling herself for the task ahead. And then she went in.

* * *

I'm standing in the room and I can feel it.

The evil that has visited this place. It's taint still hangs in the air the way the smell of the smoke from the fire does. Its stain clinging to the walls of this place like the soot from the flames; dripping down on me like the dousing water still does, from what is left of the ceiling above my head. It's touch reachin' down into my very soul, staining it too.

And it was evil, real evil that had come to call at the home of the Winchesters.

That touch fills me with a feeling so cold that I shudder involuntarily.

Turning at the sound of the floorboard creaking in the hall, expecting to see John, I see her, realising at that moment that the sound had been only in my head. She is hovering in the doorway, her fingers rubbing sleepily at her eyes as she speaks to some unknown figure in the room behind me. She has a soft, almost angelic quality about her as she smiles sweetly at whatever she is seeing that I cannot.

With a flash of long, loose, blonde hair, a little rustle of the long, white nightgown that she wears, she turns and steps out into the hallway. Something catches her eye and she steps towards the stairs.

I follow.

She has stopped at the top of the stairs, she's reaching up, touching the light, a gentle tap and then she is turning, head cocked to the side, listening. Drawn by a noise that I cannot hear, she walks downstairs.

Her image drifts from view for a moment and then she is back, screaming her baby's name, and this time there is nothing slow or sleepy in her movements. This time it is as if all the hounds in hell are chasing her.

I feel it as she passes through me, her alarm for the safety of her child. It causes me to turn, step back towards the room that she is now frozen in the doorway of, her hand to her face, recognition in her eyes. She stepped through and I feel the slam of the door that no longer stands there and her scream fills my head in a rush so intense that I am crumbling, grasping at the wall to stop myself from falling.

I feel the other in the hall now. These ones are not so strong. The imprint of the living left by traumatic events never are. John drifts into the room, away from my perception, but I know what he is seeing as I feel his horror, his fear filling me at the sight that confronts him as he looks up from his son's crib.

The older son is here too, hovering unsure before me, summoned by his mother's scream but frozen by the reflections of the flames that now glow on the walls around him.

Strangely though I feel no real fear from him. Only apprehension for what is going to happen next. He is ready but he is not afraid.

Just for a moment, I see it. It's yellow eyes glinting in the fire light and I want to scream as it stares at the child before me, it's delight as it's action painful to bare in the wake of the consequences of them.

John is back now, stronger, his fear strengthening his image. He thrusts the small bundle at the child and issues an unheard command. It is obeyed immediately and without question but then John's sense of urgency now fills the air around us. I turn to follow the image of the child, can hear in my head the slap of his bare feet on the wooden stairs as he runs down them.

And then he is gone.

And the house is burning.

One final cry from John assaults my senses and then he too is past me and gone from this house of horror, worry for his sons overriding the grief for his wife and driving him from the burning wreckage of his life.

The heat hits me then, the smell of burning wood, underlain with the awful stench of burning flesh. I gag and then instinctively lift my hand to cover my face as the flashback ends with a roar of heat and flame from the nursery.

And then it too is gone.

And finally, it is quiet.

Stillness and peace return.

And then I see her.

Stepping from her room to begin the loop again.

Her death echo stuck here until we can find a way to free her from it. Until John is strong enough to face this. I can't stay. I cannot watch the destruction of this family again.

As I turn he is standing there.

For a moment I am not sure if he is real or not and then he looks at me with those solemn, deep, green eyes and I know that the image before me is flesh and blood. Pushed against the wall, his gaze is locked on the scene that is playing out behind me. I step forward and shield him even as I feel her brush by me on the way downstairs again.

"C'mon sweet ch'ld, let's get you back to your Daddy. This ain't no place for a little 'un. Not no more."

I touch his head and he looks at me, drowns me in the sea of emotions that are swirling in his head but absent from his face. John had told me that the child isn't talking but I hear his question just as loudly as if he had spoken it.

_Did you see it too? _

"I saw it baby boy." I reach for his hand and he takes mine, grips it tightly.

"Time to go."

**Chapter End Notes:**

Hope you enjoyed that. Thank you as always for reading! mary xx


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